USA Swimming today announced that the Charlotte UltraSwim will be broadcast LIVE on the Universal Sports television network and webcast LIVE on Swimnetwork.com. Fans across the country will have the opportunity to see Olympians Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Christine Magnuson, Aaron Peirsol and Cullen Jones compete at the four-day meet in Charlotte, N.C., May 14-17.
The Charlotte UltraSwim will be the first long-course meet back in the water for U.S. Olympians and world-record holders Phelps and Jones. In advance to their finals coverage on Friday evening, Universal Sports will broadcast Phelps’ first race, the prelims of the 100m fly, the morning of May 15th LIVE on Universal Sports.
Universal Sports will air footage from the A, B and C finals Friday, May 15 through Sunday, May 17. Olympic gold medalist Rowdy Gaines will provide color commentary for the broadcast and Steve Schlanger will handle the play-by-play duties. For a current list of TV markets that air Universal Sports, click here.
Swimnetwork.com will provide a LIVE online stream of the Universal Sports broadcast. In addition, Swimnetwork.com will also webcast the finals on Thursday, May 14 and the prelims from each day of competition. Swimnetwork.com will also feature on-demand footage of the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night finals as well as behind-the-scenes interviews with Olympic gold medalist Mel Stewart.
The competition will follow the traditional meet schedule of morning prelims and evening finals. The full competition schedule can be found online here. Finals begin at 4 p.m. ET on Thursday and at 6 p.m. ET, Friday through Sunday. Prelims begin at 9 a.m. ET, Friday through Sunday.
The Charlotte UltraSwim is the fifth stop in the six-meet USA Swimming Grand Prix Series, which awards the overall series winner a $20,000 grand prize. A leaderboard can be found online at www.usaswimming.org. The final stop in the Series will be the Santa Clara International Grand Prix in Santa Clara, Calif., June 11-14.